DHAKA: Malaysia’s announcement that Myanmar has agreed to receive 5,000 refugees currently living in the country has been presented as a diplomatic breakthrough in one of Southeast Asia’s longest-running humanitarian crises.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim stated on July 29 that the agreement was made possible through constructive engagement with Myanmar.
So far, the proposal has been articulated almost entirely by Kuala Lumpur. Myanmar authorities have yet to publicly clarify the scope of the agreement, the legal status of returnees or the conditions they would face upon arrival.
The unanswered questions are fundamental. Will returnees regain citizenship and enjoy freedom of movement, access to education, health care and livelihoods?
Who will guarantee their protection from discrimination, arbitrary detention or renewed violence?
The issue is not whether the Rohingya should eventually return to Myanmar. Safe, voluntary and dignified return remains the preferred long-term solution to any refugee crisis.
The more pressing question is whether Myanmar has created the conditions that make such a return possible.
The Rohingya crisis is fundamentally a crisis of citizenship. The Rohingya had endured decades of systematic discrimination, exclusion and denial of citizenship.
The coup intensified Myanmar’s conflict, but it did not create the structural conditions that forced the Rohingya from their homes.
That solution must begin in Myanmar. Repatriation cannot succeed without meaningful guarantees of citizenship, equal rights, freedom of movement, security and accountability.
This distinction matters because durable solutions cannot be measured by the number of refugees who cross a border.
They must be judged by whether the conditions that caused displacement have fundamentally changed. Repatriation without rights risks reproducing the very crisis it seeks to resolve.
Although Malaysia is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, it has hosted a substantial Rohingya population for years.
Growing refugee numbers have generated understandable concerns over irregular migration, public services and social cohesion.
No host country should be expected to shoulder a protracted refugee crisis indefinitely without stronger regional and international support.
Yet migration management cannot come at the expense of refugee protection.
Malaysia’s own experience demonstrates why safeguards matter. In 2021, Malaysia deported more than 1,000 Myanmar nationals despite a court order temporarily halting the operation, prompting concerns from rights groups that asylum seekers and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)-registered refugees had been returned without adequate protection assessments.
The current proposal also comes amid a broader debate over refugee governance.
On July 28, Malaysian Foreign Minister Mohammad Hasan suggested that the country could reconsider the presence of the UNHCR because of alleged non-cooperation.
If there are legitimate concerns over refugee registration, screening or information-sharing, they should be resolved through transparent institutional dialogue.
Weakening the role of the UNHCR, particularly in the absence of a national asylum system, risks leaving vulnerable populations with even fewer safeguards.
Malaysia should continue engaging Myanmar, but diplomacy should not become a substitute for protection.
Any repatriation process must remain genuinely voluntary, independently monitored and supported by credible guarantees of citizenship, security and access to basic rights.
The concerns expressed by Rohingya representatives reinforce this point.
The Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organisation in Malaysia (MEHROM) has urged the Malaysian government to reconsider the proposed return, warning that conditions inside Myanmar remain too dangerous for refugees to return safely.
At the centre of this debate lies the principle of non-refoulement, a cornerstone of international refugee protection that prohibits states from returning people to countries where they face persecution or other serious harm.
Any coerced removal of Rohingya while such risks persist would therefore raise serious concerns under international law.
Those risks remain real. Fighting between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army continues across parts of Rakhine State, while humanitarian access remains severely restricted, making independent verification of conditions exceedingly difficult.
Reports of forced conscription, arbitrary detention and ongoing abuses further undermine confidence that returnees would be adequately protected.
The debate over repatriation also cannot ignore Bangladesh, which continues to bear the greatest humanitarian burden of the crisis. '
Since 2017, it has hosted more than 1.3 million Rohingya refugees, placing enormous pressure on humanitarian resources and local communities as international funding steadily declines.
Yet Bangladesh has consistently maintained that repatriation should occur only when conditions inside Myanmar permit refugees to return safely, voluntarily and with dignity.
The issue is not whether the Rohingya should eventually return to Myanmar.
Safe, voluntary and dignified return remains the preferred long-term solution to any refugee crisis.
The more pressing question is whether Myanmar has created the conditions that make such a return possible.
Speaking at the 33rd ASEAN Regional Forum Ministerial Meeting in Manila, Bangladeshi Foreign Affairs Adviser Khalilur Rahman described the Rohingya as “stateless by design”, arguing that their plight is the product of deliberate political exclusion rather than simply a consequence of conflict.
His observation captures the essence of the crisis. Statelessness is not merely a humanitarian condition to be managed. It is a political failure requiring a political solution.
That solution must begin in Myanmar. Repatriation cannot succeed without meaningful guarantees of citizenship, equal rights, freedom of movement, security and accountability.
Malaysia should continue engaging Myanmar while ensuring that refugee protection remains separate from domestic migration pressures.
Bangladesh deserves greater regional and international burden-sharing so that prolonged hosting does not become an unsustainable responsibility.
ASEAN also has a critical role. Rather than treating repatriation as a diplomatic achievement in itself, it should recognise it as the outcome of genuine political progress inside Myanmar.
This means pressing Myanmar to provide concrete guarantees for Rohingya rights, expanding humanitarian assistance in Myanmar and Bangladesh, ensuring Rohingya representatives participate in decisions affecting their future and recognising the crisis as an atrocity-prevention challenge.
Myanmar’s experience has repeatedly shown that discrimination, dehumanisation, statelessness and impunity are warning signs of mass atrocities.
Without addressing these structural causes, repatriation will remain a temporary response rather than a durable solution. - The Daily Star/ANN
